The drip of sticky sweet imperfection lingered on my fingertips as I stepped into the passenger side of my husband’s car this weekend, clinging to my glistening camel colored cake for dear life. It plastered a few strands of my tattered blonde hair to my chest. A smudge of it rested over my shoulder on…

I know it’s prime summertime, really I do; and I know what that means. It means cutoff shorts and flip flop tan lines. It means cedar-lined garden beds overflowing with fire engine red tomatoes and bright yellow squash blossoms. It means smoke that billows upwards from backyard barbecues and water droplets that fall off of…

To say we’ve had a tumultuous history would be an understatement. Our relationship began as mere infatuation, lust even. You were elusive and foreign, the new kid in school that all the girls swoon over. I wanted to learn everything, to know you. But in my teenage stupor I exercised no restraint. I didn’t just…

Taylor bit into the silver, sparkling skin of the herring and ripped off its head with his teeth. He looked up at us, wiped the dribble from his chin, and spit into the frigid Alaskan waters. Several more less than bashful spits followed. I had to choke back my laughter. “How’d it taste?” I asked, knowing what…

It feels like it’s been forever since I posted in this little space of mine. It turns out keeping up with a cooking blog when you’re traveling without access to your kitchen for several months is really difficult. (I know, poor me.) It also means I have a few housekeeping items to cover before I can…

A couple of months ago, as I was just starting work on the recipe testing for the dish I’m sharing with you today, I came into my house carrying two heaping brown paper bags of stinging nettles. I’d picked them up at the farmers market and carted them home with me, eager to get started…

I dropped my line, which was weighted down with a spherical ten-pound weight, into the freezing cold Alaskan waters and watched it sink like a rock. Thousands of tiny bubbles sprung up from the clear-deep blue water and my rod buzzed as the solar-powered lure fell towards the bottom. It went on for an impossibly long…

A few weeks ago, one of my favorite food bloggers posted a mouthwatering recipe for Goat Cheese and Tomato Balsamic Toast along with a very serious question: “Is toast’s moment in the sun over?” It appeared that most of Stephanie’s readers felt emphatically that toast is still a thing. Just few weeks later, though, the mega…

As a child, I was often perplexed by some of my friends’ eating habits. There were those who refused to eat anything that sounded like it came from a foreign land. And there were others who wouldn’t touch foods that weren’t white. This was particularly confusing to me since I had a love of all…

I’m sitting on an airplane as I type, heading to California. When I first plopped down in my seat just thirty minutes ago, I, like everyone else on the plane it seems, immediately fetched my phone out of my bag, hoping to pass the minutes catching up on social media until the doors finally closed…

When I first found out I’d been admitted to Stanford’s PhD program in sociology, I danced around my tiny apartment like a crazy person for all of twenty-four hours before a strange, sinking feeling took over. I felt undeserving. Like someone else, but surely not me, should have gotten that spot. I carried that feeling…

I have some very exciting news that I have been absolutely dying to share with you. I’m crazy excited to tell y’all that Chocolate + Marrow was recently named a finalist in the Saveur Blog Awards thanks to your kind words and nominations! The folks at Saveur received 50,000 (!!!) nominations for food blogs from…

Fractured scenes of crispy flat dough circles flickered in and out of my head. One right in front of me. Basil leaves, vibrant and green, scattered across its top. Steam billowing upwards towards the skies. Cheese swimming on the surface, bubbling from its rest in the wood-fired oven. I lifted a slice and half of…

I told myself that I was going to take this week off from blogging. I’m in the throes of turning in my final dissertation chapter, which means lots of heart palpitations, sleepless nights, and a handful of near breakdowns. It also means far fewer minutes spent cleaning up around the house. (That last bit I…

When I first pulled up to the tiny, colorful fish shack that sat in a parking lot directly off of Highway 35, I immediately spotted Doug, its owner. He was wearing sandals and shorts and his long black hair hung in a tri-banded ponytail down the center of his back. As I approached the stand,…

Did you know that cakes float? Well, not all cakes I suppose, but I can say with absolute certainty that bad grocery store varieties, with their colorful roses and sickly sweet fluffed frosting, most definitely float on water. This pivotal culinary revelation (I mean, really, where would I be as a cook if I didn’t know that some…

Even though we’ve lived in our house for nearly a year now, our backyard is still bare, save for the two hunter-green folding chairs that sit in the middle of it, just next to our makeshift stone-lined fire pit. They’re the same chairs that my husband and I have lugged with us to football tailgates…

When I first meet someone new and they find out I live in Portland, their next question is usually: “Ohhh is it just like the show Portlandia?” And my response is always: “Why, yes. Yes it is.” That comes off as sarcastic in writing, but I swear to you it’s not. It is genuine. Real…

I sat with my husband at the small corner table of our neighborhood Indian restaurant this past Friday and poked at my Pork Vindaloo. MM, who knows me well enough to know I don’t usually poke at my food, leaned over to me and asked, “What’s going on babe? You seem glum.” “No, no, I’m fine,”…

I first met Ashley Rodriguez, the creator of Not Without Salt, and her husband Gabe at a photography workshop in Seattle. They were bubbly and sweet, each of their personalities naturally feeding off of the other’s as they demonstrated the inner-workings of a camera. In between teachings, they’d make playful jabs and jokes accompanied by…

There’s a barbecue restaurant here in Portland called The People’s Pig. It’s walking distance from my house and sits on an oddly commercial piece of land, a stone’s throw from a neighborhood supermarket and adjacent to a busy thoroughfare. Upon entering The Pig on its soft opening day this past summer, I almost turned around…

I recently read an article about waste that has really stuck with me. I haven’t been able to get it off my mind. Generally speaking, I absolutely can’t stand to see things go to waste or to spend valuable dollars on frivolous purchases. (One exception to this is when said purchases involve secondhand food props, in which…

My husband is annoyingly good at sports. Most wives would be proud of that, and for the most part, I am. But it’s also frustrating at times how he takes to nearly every sport we do together like a duck to water. Let me give you an example. When we took our first windsurfing lessons several years ago,…

Hello, lovely readers. I’m writing with some exciting news: C+M has a brand new look! I’d love it if you would head over to the blog to check it out. Also, if you’re currently subscribed as a “WordPress.com user” (meaning you have a blog of your own on WordPress.com) please make sure to sign up…

There’s a Russian word that I’ve recently become enamored with. It’s called zakuski and it means “small bites” or hors d’oeuvres. Though I suppose it’s not really the word that I’ve fallen for, so much as the idea of the zakuski table—a table that is completely covered by an array of dishes meant for snacking…

As it turns out, I have no self control. You see, I love this blogging thing so much that I decided that, with just hours to go until our big dinner feast, I was going to make a blog post. I wasn’t planning to make a post, but I spent all morning working on the most…

Before I left my home in New Orleans for college, my mom handed me a beautiful blue and white book. It was filled with old family recipes and dishes we’d cooked together in various kitchens throughout my childhood. Recipes for the holidays, for birthdays, and other family-centric celebrations. She passed it off to me excitedly as…

Before I started this blog in January, I have to admit, I wasn’t the most internet-connected person. I used Facebook from time to time, but I was adamant about keeping a safe distance from social media so as to protect my “real” personal life. I boycotted Twitter, steered clear of Instagram, and told myself, “who really…

Each afternoon during my cooking classes in Southern Italy (see here and here), my instructor, Maria, would present me with the daily menu, giving me the run down of what we’d be preparing for that evening. Most days, I was familiar with the items: eggplant parmesan, fresh tagliatelle, ragù, risotto. But on the final day…

There’s a Christmas tree up in my house right now. A big, bushy one filled with lights and mismatched ornaments. It consumes our tiny living room, making the furniture look miniature. At its base lies a burlap tree skirt with silver threading, which we had to rig up to cover the floor on the front half…

This past week has truly been one filled with gratitude. As many of you already know, I’ve been teaching a Sociology course on Sex and Relationships at a local university this semester. I had never designed and taught my own course before, and after just a few days on the job, I quickly realized it…

When I first moved to San Francisco six years ago, I recall thinking: “Oh, hell yes, I’m going to learn so much about wine!” But the truth is, Napa Valley is a good ways away from SF. And my friends and I were usually too broke from actually living in the pricey Bay Area to be…

Tucked away in a stone cottage off of Highway 190 in Southeastern Louisiana, lies a restaurant called La Provence. It sits on a piece of land that includes a small vegetable and animal farm, and it’s not uncommon to hear the animals milling about the property upon arrival. The inside of the quaint auberge-style structure, feels more like a…

My Food Philosophy & Inspiration:

The food I feature on C+M is is made entirely from scratch and relies on local and seasonal ingredients; but it is not necessarily intended to be dietetic. So if you're looking for that hot, new kale recipe, cover your eyes and calmly hit the back button. This is food that is rich and decadent, made for times of indulgence. This is food for celebrating.

My specific cooking inspiration comes from many different places, but much of it stems from growing up in New Orleans, where my Cajun grandmother would fix me creamy grits for breakfast and fried catfish for dinner. Where I'd catch fresh crabs with my momma and fight with my sister over who got to slurp down the tomalle on a slice of crispy french bread. I'm also regularly inspired by my current life in Portland, Oregon, where I am spoiled daily by the culinary creations of some of the world's most inventive chefs and the unrivaled bounty of the PNW. I hope the recipes I feature on C+M will inspire you, too, to celebrate the richness of life through food.

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The Quote that Inspired the Blog

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately. To front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach. And not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. To live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life. To cut a broad swath and shave close. To drive life into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms. And, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."